The thing is that they still hold an iron grip on most creative users as all their software doesn't yet work on Linux. So we are left with little to no choice between enduring windows and Linux fanatics screaming "Just find an alternative software and relearn everything you've spent years learning and perfecting in your preferred one"
Lemmy folk forgetting that not every person cares enough to switch OSes.
If you ever work tech support even at a basic level, you'll see. It's not even boomers or genZ. I helped a grown ass human who was my age at 40yo how to install a Firefox extension.
Lemmy folk forgetting that not every person cares enough to switch OSes.
Right, so if they don't care they're not going to complain very much about it. If they are going to complain what are they going to do about it? If it's "just complain and nothing else" then Microsoft doesn't care.
So are you volunteering to install Linux on everyone's machines when they get a new computer? And answer their tech support questions when they inevitably need that one program?
I'm volunteering to install Linux on my machine instead of just bitching about Microsoft while continuing to use Windows.
I don't see how pointing out the reality of "if you're not going to stop using Windows then Microsoft doesn't care what you think" somehow makes me responsible for every computer in the world.
Can y’all IT people please stop with the condescending “you don’t know how stupid people are about computers”, it seems like there is always one of you showing up in a comment thread to tell us that we can’t have the future literally all of us want including you all as well… because WE are too stupid and lazy about computers.
I helped a grown ass human who was my age at 40yo how to install a Firefox extension.
Were you as condescending to them in person as you are being in referencing them right now? Why is not knowing how to install a Firefox extension some indicator of foreclosure on the possibility of that person becoming computer literate along whatever metrics you define? There are plenty of smart people out there who can learn how to use a computer for very complex tasks who have just simply never learned about extensions for Firefox. This is a very feasible and normal reality.
Do you know how to change the oil on your car yourself? Do simple plumbing jobs? Could you run a classroom of middle schoolers and keep them all focused while keeping your eye on the shy sad kid in the back who tends to disappear if you don’t engage them? What about basic healthcare changes or cooking? What about outdoor work or basic small engine maintenance? Do you even know shit about the most basic species of trees in your backyard? Do you know the species of songbirds you often hear outside your window? Do you even pay attention to that? Do you know how to drive a dirt bike extremely fast on a rough dirt road? Do you know how to adjust for the violent explosive power of turbo lag in a car with a turbocharger so that torque oversteer doesn’t launch you off the road? Do you know how to sew and repair basic garments? To weave? Can you even fish? Like could you literally even just catch a fish to save your life right now if I handed you a fishing rod unassembled with no instructions?
My point is, don’t go looking for confirmation of how stupid or lazy people are or how limited their capacity is to evolve and grow by casting the shapes of their ignorance onto the floor and trying to read some magic language from that.
Maybe they don’t know because they are hopelesssly stupid, but maybe not? If they are intelligent and they don’t know computers then those are the perfect people to teach linux. Then it is their first language instead of windows, many linux distro are perfectly fine for this at this point.
See here is the bottom line, legions of IT people show up online always arguing they think they know that the average person is too dumb, lazy and uninterested in computers for Linux adoption to seriously take off in the personal computer market and challenge Microsoft, but y’all don’t know shit about humans. You are experts in computers who think that makes you experts in human potential.
Go take some theater classes (or get an degree in education) and get educated before you start drawing conclusions about people when you really haven’t spent time closely studying how people engage with their potential and what situations facilitate that in basic human interaction and framing of conversations (both literal and abstract).
I’m sorry if I snapped at you but I think it is existentially important to recognize here that we don’t know what people are capable of, you can’t know the essential capacity of people to change, don’t try to predict it. Focus on creating the material opportunity for change and the rest may follow depending on what people desire, no matter to us, we desire to create that positive opportunity for change because it is the right thing to do, not because we like the future growth charts of the things we believe are important and vital.
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I think the examples are a bit too far fetched:
I'd wager most people use a computer/phone on a daily basis, which is why having a basic understanding of it seems like knowledge we should all have.
Inversely, most people don't need even have a turbo in their car and many don't even have a car, so any knowledge relating to that is probably useless for them.
That being said, even if someone is less knowledgeable in a field, respect should always be the baseline, as you illustrate, they're probably skilled in something else!
I'm saying that as an IT person that's aware that I'm making money mostly because people don't bother to learn all this, so in the end I don't mind that much.
Excellent rant, I hate that doomer mindset. Old people used DOS, kids figure out vpns to get on gambling sites. People aren't stupid they just haven't had a reason to learn, or didn't have someone to make them care.
I think you're missing the point here. It's more that people couldn't even be bothered to search up how to do something (that takes seconds) that they want to do first, and instead just rely on someone they think is an expert without putting in any effort at all.
Your examples don't really make sense either as a lot of these are paid professions for larger tasks that most people simply don't want to do. There's a huge difference in searching online "how to install a Firefox extension" vs "how to do an weave", etc.
End of the day, the average person doesn't care and if they truly did they'd have the initiative to have just researched it and done it on their own.
Bringing it back to the whole thing about Linux, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have to help debug a user's Linux installation when they already need help with installing a browser add on? I work with tech and Linux on a daily basis and I already find it frustrating doing it for myself (fuck Nvidia drivers). No way am I gonna recommend it to someone else.
Exactly. Look at Reddit/Lemmy where people ask questions instead of searching, when they could've gotten their answer faster by searching using their question as a query instead of posting it (i.e. LMGTFY). People are lazy in very weird ways, some are happier to call tech support than read an article, even if that call takes more than 2x as long as the search.
Bringing it back to the whole thing about Linux, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have to help debug a user’s Linux installation when they already need help with installing a browser add on? I work with tech and Linux on a daily basis and I already find it frustrating doing it for myself (fuck Nvidia drivers). No way am I gonna recommend it to someone else.
Are you honestly going to still claim at this late date of 2024 that a decent popular linux distro is actually going to be MORE of a headache than Windows?
I'm not sure why that is so hard to believe. I use Ubuntu and Windows at work daily and Windows at home. I know the challenges of both and Windows at worst just annoys me with them forcing the new Outlook app on me. Everything else just works. Plays games amazingly, Visual Studio is uncontested, syncs nicely with my Android phone and I have no driver issues whatsoever. Don't have to go diving into the command line to change settings either.
The only time Linux works perfectly for me is on my Steam Deck and that's entirely because Valve has handled all the driver issues for us on that hardware.
Outlook is atrocious what on earth are you talking about? Just trying to use it at work it is so frustrating and the UI is horrendous for everything. Truly even basic things like trying to read when a meeting actually starts just from looking at the calendar is a headache, and because all of this is proprietary unlike with Linux, tough luck, that is how things are and you can’t do shit to change it. Neither can an experienced computer user trying to help you.
I am sorry you really don’t have an accurate handle on the state of things anymore, I think you are stuck in your ways and stressed out by life and you don’t realize that emotion and lack of mental plasticity is leading to you assume everyone else is as stuck in their ways as you (including your future self when you are able to feel less overworked and stressed).
Windows is atrocious at this point, search doesn’t work and purposefully confuses new computer users about where is being searched and what is being searched. Ads pop up everywhere in the UI and will continue to spread like a terminal cancer in the UI.
Search on windows also just sucks and takes ages with the default settings (an inexperienced computer user will be using).
The file manager on windows in most marquee windows programs like word, excel etc.. all open up an entirely different file manager half way through the process of saving a file in perhaps the most insane UI pattern to keep from the mess that was Windows 8 (even though I actually really liked the core idea at first).
Windows is buggy AND windows is constantly playing head games with its user by trying to force them to use the edge browser. It is very very confusing to a new computer user what the hell is even going on.
I mean, Windows illegally changed the entire operating system countless people had without getting consent because it would look good for their numbers.
Seriously you are WAYYY out of your league if you are going to claim a nice Linux distribution on good hardware with good driver support (such as some dells or thinkpads) is categorically wayyy worse than trying to use a windows laptop in 2024….
…please get your head out of the sand :)
I mean do you want to get into the massive security vulnerability at a tactical and strategic level that Microsoft’s co-pilot represents? This is endgame for business security, Windows is in a worse spot than it has been in probably a decade at least and they deserve it. IT people and corporations have to seriously wonder if Windows even cares about following the law, which makes trusting Windows for the software relied upon by their company a complex question indeed…..
It used to be that Linux was better ideologically because it gave you agency over your computer, but now things have gotten so much worse that the reason is practical and no longer ideological.
I don't think you're talking about the Outlook I am talking about because I'm talking about the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, not the Office ones. And that's fine and dandy about proprietary software and all but frankly I haven't really seen any non-proprietary mail apps that look aesthetically pleasing. But that's besides the point, it's a matter of personal preference when it comes to visuals after all.
You don't have to come here and assume you know everything about me simply from my choice of OS and invalidating my experiences with personal attacks no less. If your rant here is trying to convince me or anyone else who is reading that we should abandon Windows because of the reasons, you have stated, you are failing terribly I'm afraid. Not everyone has such high standards as you have and it's frankly patronizing for you to think that I or anyone else have not considered these options when it affects our workflow. If anything, people reading this are gonna be dissuaded of Linux because if this is the kind of tone and experience we're going to get when we try to, well, it's a lot less stressful staying away from Linux.
It's somewhat concerning that you have such a strong obsession over the topic that you would go and whether intentionally or unintentionally offend people and I hope that you are a much more pleasant person to converse with outside of this topic or even this site.
I'd also like to add, nowhere did I ever mention using laptops. All my experiences are with desktops that I had a hand in building from scratch. So I'm not sure what you're even getting at with those assumptions.
I don’t think you’re talking about the Outlook I am talking about because I’m talking about the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, not the Office ones. And that’s fine and dandy about proprietary software and all but frankly I haven’t really seen any non-proprietary mail apps that look aesthetically pleasing. But that’s besides the point, it’s a matter of personal preference when it comes to visuals after all.
... I am not just talking about little details and preferences here? Windows products are increasingly broken and dysfunctional at every level. Features don't work, features are randomly changed and broken, nothing is consistent, core features of the computer are made opaque, any given Linux package manager is about 1000000 times more trustable than the ad ridden, sketchy, bloatware filled Windows store where you have to hunt for actually useful and trustable tools. One of my old bosses had his work windows computer update to a new windows OS without really asking him (technically it did, but then it just kept scheduling an OS upgrade until he missed it). It didn't break his computer, but he had thousands and thousands of hours of cad drafting work on that computer and Windows could have EASILY fucked up in the update process, or the old software we were using could have EASILY not been compatible. Windows basically flipped a coin for whether they were going to utterly grind my bosses business to a halt and cause utter panic or just have the computer update. This is not "user friendly" software design, this is not "easy to use software made by an extremely competent software company".
I’d also like to add, nowhere did I ever mention using laptops. All my experiences are with desktops that I had a hand in building from scratch. So I’m not sure what you’re even getting at with those assumptions.
....because for 99% of people who are going to be using a computer for light email, research and text editing work they are going to be using a laptop? I don't really understand what about my argument doesn't apply to windows prebuilts that have good driver support for linux...?
It’s somewhat concerning that you have such a strong obsession over the topic that you would go and whether intentionally or unintentionally offend people and I hope that you are a much more pleasant person to converse with outside of this topic or even this site.
I think it is completely reasonable to be upset when someone is condescendingly foreclosing the possibility that something can happen when the evidence they are using for it is outdated and they refuse to update it in their heads. The only response at that point when someone refuses to re-evaluate their position and continues to "speak for the group" when they really don't represent the group anymore is to make it even clearer that they don't speak for a group, and I am sorry if my method offended here, I believe your heart is in the right place but please stop trying to tell us about how stupid and unwilling people are to learn new things. Please please please just keep your mouth closed, it doesn't help anyone, period. Even if you were right, there would be nothing to change in our actions as it would just be hopeless to even try?
This isn't 2015, a good Linux distribution is as polished, easy to use, and easy to explain to a newbie computer user as Windows is. If you aren't ready to accept that shrugs I mean fine but don't push your outmoded narrative into conversations that might actually convince someone who doesn't know about Linux that it isn't worth checking out as a serious alternative. You are actively doing damage to the future of this software movement by dismissing it offhand like this.
I legitimately, non-ironically, prefer Edge over Chrome, and I cannot explain why; possibly brain damage, possibly too lazy to download Chrome or Firefox and setup my account for either.
Edge and Chrome are basically very similar at this point. Firefox is my browser of choice these days. It's not perfect, but at least it isn't anti-adblocking and doesn't freak out when I block 8.8.8.8 like Chrome and the Google devices in my house. I'm moving away from Google as they move away from not being evil. Moving to self hosted stuff as much as I can for photos, email, file storage, and soon, home automation.
The thing that irks me the most is that those things work. They'll see a little complain from the most vocal ones, and that's it. The revenue will increase, their shareholders will be pleased, the OS will be worse, and we'll have no viable alternative.
Unless governments start to regulate the hell out of tech companies, it's only downhill from there.
Edit: about Linux, it's not viable if you're outside IT or rely on commercial software. That's a debate for another post.
Adobe Creative Cloud, which despite the name is pretty much local. And although Microsoft Office works online, it has a series of issues that the desktop version doesn't have, like broken formatting on Word.
Autodesk for myself, apparently its super dependant on .net and other windows framework so its not like they are going to make it linux compatible any time soon.
You're correct on all counts, but you're also not a typical desktop user, you're definitely a professional or power user with specific needs.
The average user needs the ability to use a web browser and that's honestly about it. That's why Chromebooks are so popular with schools. A basic Linux desktop is quite capable for a standard user.
For the things yoi need you're correct that it's not 1:1 and you'd need to move to open source alternatives or tinker with VMs/WINE to get those apps working and it would be a chore.
This is not me. But the kinds of people I'm encountered in my social circle.
I'm in the CS/Research industry, so all my tools are linux compatible and have been a Linux user for the past decade.
I think it's better to have a realistic expectation of Linux rather than consider it a 1:1 Windows alternative. I agree with your last para fully.
"Too far" is what they're looking for. In other words, "How much bullshit can we cram down their throats before they'll spend an absurd amount of money on a disposable Macbook or spend their days becoming a sysadmin so they can use Linux?" Doesn't seem that they've found that line yet. They're still looking.
For what, may I ask? Can you give an example? I'm on Debian, arguably a less friendly distro than most, but I haven't had to touch the terminal in two weeks. And it was just to ping a server somewhere, something you need to do on the command line in Windows as well.
Yes it is. You seem reluctant to tell anybody which distro you're using (even downvoting the person who asked), probably because you know they'd point out that it is in fact there.
Below I'm showing you how it is on my laptop running GNOME, the most used desktop environment. It's similarly easy in KDE Plasma and Cinnamon. Even the more niche DEs like Pantheon, Budgie, XFCE, and LXQT have had that functionality for many years.
I'm "reluctant" because I've used a dozen of them. None of them had this option. No sense in wasting time arguing about something I already know you can't do.
I did not say how to change them. I said how to change the default device. Not sure why you feel the need to lie about this.
Every time I turn on my PC it defaults to the wrong audio device and the wrong power profile and I have to change it back. I can Google a dozen different commands that do nothing but give me some sort of generic error.
You really don't. I don't know what on earth you're doing that requires it.
And I have to do bullshit like go onto powershell and the heap of shit that is the Windows registry from time to time, too. Shit, you need to enter commands to install windows with an offline account now, it's insane.
I wish Microsoft could make Windows as user-friendly as most Linux distros are. It seems like you need to be a computer scientist to use Windows sometimes.
Imma make the jump once they force me to 11. I've been saying this for years but they finally got something cooking i truly can't abide. That screenshot of what you're up to every ten seconds is fucking terrifying to me and that's not even considering govt snooping. I ain't about to leave a record of my porn consumption for my wife to see lol! Linux is finally juuuust about idiot proof and game friendly enough for me. Can't wait to be one of those smug guys that says 'just use linux lol'
Microsoft has made the choice very easy for me. I still have an i7-7700k that works just fine. But that's "too old", so when Windows 10 hits end of life, I'll be switching over to Linux.
Not important enough to me at this point to spend the time changing over. Windows 10 does what I need it to and still gets security updates. When one of those two factors changed, then it will be worth my time to change over.
I hear you. It's been a burutal long slog of putting up with their crap for as-long-as-one-has-done-it no matter when anyone gets out. I made the switch to mac and linux many years ago and after a brief transition period, everything personal-computer-related became wonderful somehow. Well . . . "neat", anyway. Leaving behind extensive and difficult experience with everything from 3.1 to 95, to 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, and 10. (skipped 8 for obvious reasons.) It had its good times but they're long gone. Good riddance. Best of luck to anyone still out there.
I recommend Linux Mint. It's very beginner friendly and you don't need to use the console too much if that kind of thing bothers you. The GUI even looks very similar to a Windows 10 environment.
I installed it on my Grandma's PCs not too long ago and even she enjoys it. She's almost 80.
We are having issues with her printer but it's one that has known issues with Linux in general (it's a fancy Epson laser printer, scanner, fax machine combo with bad Windows support) but I'm hoping to rectify that soon.
I would say the GUI reminds me more of Windows 7 than 10 which I really dig
I didn’t wait. I did it earlier this year and haven’t booted from my Windows 10 drive since then. My entry drug was Linux Mint. But I quickly switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after because I wanted something that ran the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment (I prefer how it looks and handles multiple displays). It isn’t that hard to learn the basics you need to use Linux, as long as you use a decently stable distro that you won’t need to troubleshoot at every update. In my limited experience, you only need more in depth knowledge when you try messing around with more "cutting edge" and less "stable" distros and are installing experimental features.
I can’t believe that Microsoft is expecting everyone to get rid of their computer to switch to 11 once the support for 10 expires next year. I even revived an 15 year old laptop that only had 4Gb or RAM by installing Mint on it (and switching its HDD with an SSD I had kicking around). It’s fast and perfectly usable for everything but modern games now
Not knocking your choice, OpenSUSE is a grand daddy OS, but if others are looking for a good KDE experience I find Fedora KDE Spin, which is not anweird fork yoi can get it from Red Hat themselves, is very good and come out of the box with all the latest and greatest like Wayland and Pipewire by default.
I tried Fedora KDE spin first but it didn't work out for me. IDK if it was my hardware configuration it didn't like but the first time I booted it, it spammed me with crash reports. I poked around it for a few minutes, not being able to go far without things crashing again and again. I installed the updates and rebooted it hoping it would fix it but it got much worse after that. I couldn't do anything else as it immediately crashed at startup. I couldn't be bothered to look any further into it and switched to OpenSUSE which has been rock solid for months and still going. I'm running Plasma 6.1 with Wayland on it with no issues as well and I know Plasma 6.2 is coming soon. It uses pipewire as default as well. To be honest, IDK what Fedora would do better for my uses, except maybe for a faster package manager.
I'm certain that my Fedora experience isn't typical but for me at least it was a disaster.
Yeah that doesn't sound typical, but you're right if you've got those going on OpenSUSE then I don't think you're missing anything major. If Fedora ever gives me trouble I might give that a try. I just wasn't interested in PopOS or Mint as a lot of other people were because I want those latest core components and don't really like GNOME.
I took the plunge about a week ago with Pop!_OS. It took a good 3 or 4 days before I started to feel really comfortable with things. (Which is probably because I'm really picky)
If you have the time to try it out (and remember, always dual boot so you have a fall back and can switch back when you need to) I recommend it. The last remnant remaining for me is Photoshop, and there's a GitHub page for downloading it with very few steps now.
I had a win 10 VM set up and it "booted" faster than my regular win 10 drive. I then switched to a win 10 LTSC VM and it "booted" a solid 10 seconds quicker on top of that.
Try out krita, rawtherapee, darktable, for photoshop stuffs, depending on what you need.
The Adobe stuff always held me back before but I finally just started messing with linux and trying stuff out. I don't need photoshop for professional use so I was fine spending the time trying to find alternatives for what I needed
Unfortunately I use Photoshop pretty heavily. I'm trying to split my different use-cases of Photoshop into different applications.
I tried Krita, and was immediately put off by how you have to input text in a different window, and can't see it live. GIMP's UI feels so different.
I'll add rawtherapee and darktable to my list to try, and I'm still giving Krita and gimp a chance. You can't expect to just slide right into a new program in a day after spending a decade in something else.
+1 to PopOS. My only gripe is that they and Nvidia still haven't figured out how to move to Wayland, but once that happens (and we can all switch to cosmic), I'll be a happy camper.
the issue I have had with PopOS is multi-monitor support, I cant rotate my rotated second monitor except through the nvidia settings, and my settings get wiped after a reboot, its a known issue for years, other than that I havent had any problems, I have been slowly finding replacement software for everything that I used on windows
Interesting, I have that setup, but then again I have an official system 76 machine that is still supported. I have three monitors with one rotated for dev work/teams (ugg).
I switched to Linux mint. No ragrets. It takes a bit of fiddling and a teensie bit of a learning curve. But it's way easier than Microsofts endless deluge of shit.
If you wanna game and want everything to work, get bazzite, i wanted to install arch, had huge probs with my nvdia card (i know, but it was gifted with the cudas in mind) so i used bazzite since i loved the steam OS look.
I am so pleased, it works amazingly, and there was 0 problems during installation.
The only thing stopping me is stupid vanguard for league. I'm close to just getting a clean league only mini pc and having my main one be Linux. I'll have to check out bazzite. I play the usual minecraft, terraria, ff14, indie games mostly so hopefully they run fine. I don't think I've played a AAA game in like 7 years.
Perfectly understandable. Any anti cheat is a big nono on this system. But tbh, i am so much more relaxed after stopping league i consider it a bonus guardrail XD
Guys, I'll switch in a heartbeat to a Linux OS if any one you can recommend a stable OS that works on a Surface Go 2. It should support its touchscreen, of course, and a Surface Pen. Plus, a FOSS alternative to Journal would be stellar
I don't. But the person I replied to said they were having trouble with Linux on a surface.
So, that's a project dedicated to Linux on surfaces. I would presume they had tried the usual distros and found them lacking
The linux mint forums make it seem like it works out of the box. I know that it worked out of the box for my Thinkpad x380, even the touchscreen, pen, and screen rotation.
Mint is the only version you have a chance of liking if you are coming from windows. I know windows sucks and people low to pump Linux but most distros simply aren't user friendly.
Thanks for the insight. I tried my hands at Kubuntu on an old laptop of mine and didn't mind the few differences too much. From what I've heard on Lemmy, Mint seems to be a good all-around suggestion for new Linux users, though
Microsoft went too far in 2001 when they included a new online activation feature in Windows XP which spearheaded the future of drm and enshitification. They've been one-upping themselves ever since. All the most recent stuff is just more icing on the shit cake.
I'd say that the 'modern' era of Microsoft Enshittification started with IE4 as well as Windows 98.
The Channel bar put ads on the Windows 95 & 98 desktops. It was easily disabled, but even that far back, Microsoft was starting to work on making their stuff suck just that much more.
Next was Windows ME blocking DOS access, while still running on DOS, making the OS a bit ... unstable, followed by your point of Software Activation in XP.
People think I'm nuts when I say Win2k was my favorite Windows. I switched to Linux before Vista came out. People say WinXP was good, but really, it was just tolerable.
High five, brother :)
I think the XP crowd was just the generation of "one step more tolerant towards privacy intrusions" / not quite computer knowledgeable enough to understand the implications of letting your operating system phone home. In terms of user interface, it was indeed tolerable - you could still configure it to look and behave like Win2K mostly, which is what I had to do for work for quite a long time.
Compared to Win2k, it would just be a resource-hog. :/
I’ve been using Linux off and on for about 15 years now. It’s so much easier to use now compared to when I started. I understand why people might’ve avoided it in the past. But the list of excuses is getting pretty small these days.
I've been full time for a year and a half now. I tried switching a bunch of times before that and same problems as you. I love it now, it's a pleasure to use my computer and know that it's not doing any bullshit behind the scenes.
I've kept Windows installed on a spare drive for years now. I don't remember when I last booted into it on purpose, it was certainly more than a year ago, and was just to install Minecraft Bedrock to play with his friends (his friends bailed). My kids have only ever used Linux. :)
I've managed to de-google completely and mostly de-microsoft, but I use cloud streaming (shadow) for gaming and anything else that's more than my shitty laptop can't handle and there's no way to use Linux on the cloud part. Only thing I can't do anything about yet, and doubt that'll change anytime soon or at all.
I wholeheartedly believe that all forma of unsolicited or public advertising should be completely banned. Nothing good comes from it, it is only a nuisance to everyone.
Imagine If I worked for Kellogs and I hired a guy to follow you and yell about how good corn flakes are every time you look at your phone, every time your TV shows go on a break, and every time you pass a billboard in your car, or a marquee on a building. Even if we assume that person does nothing else illegal somehow, that could easily still be harassment, which is definitely not free speech.
I've been called a sovereign citizen as an insult, though I'm just a voluntarist (not sure if ancap or generic anarchist), and that sometimes was past the point of me saying
things like “Listen here you little shit”
but I'll admit "the society" wasn't persuaded. Though sometimes it felt that possibly more than half of the people present agreed, but were confident that the majority doesn't.
It's actually a very good propaganda strategy - even if most people disagree with you (as the bad guy), what's important is that they believe that others agree and thus keep their heads down.
They should, but that's never going to happen unless political lobbying is made very illegal (like life ruining and business bankrupting illegal, not slap on the wrist, cost of business illegal)
We should be able to charge them for ad time. You want to paint an advertisement on my car you have to pay me. Why should it be any different when you want to put ads on my work computer screen when I'm working with clients?
And it's not like w11 is free, the price of a PC with Windows installed comes with its' license's costs. It's not told to the consumer so they won't even know they are using a product they paid for, for them it's what a clean basic PC looks like. And that's what prevents many to care about it the same way they can be frustrated by a paid streaming plan with ads. To take is as a given, and shifting the Overtone's window of fucked up services even further.
I don't like solving things with regulation, because that's always a victory in one battle making the enemy stronger for all the following ones.
But doing this EU-style, like browser choice, only with operating systems, can be a solution.
People love cheap and easy things. That's how social media won over normal web. Seeing the choice between "install Fedora for freeeeeee" and "install Windows for 20$" significant amount will choose the former.
Now if there's no other option or if the variant with Linux is labeled as "other" or "no OS", and listed separately, normies still choose Windows 99% of cases. Sometimes they pirate it.
They should have a clear choice in the store from a few OSes with details. Summaries with screenshots will do.
A regulatory change would obviously need to prevent them from hiding that kind in intentionally too long legalese TOS. It has to be a clear single acknowledge, not obfuscated or bundled with functionality.
But how will the wealth addled convince us pleblians to spend money on worthless garbage? Or convince us that we're ugly and not good enough so we buy their products? Oh the humanity!
In all seriousness, advertising has had way too much of an influence on our culture and it needs to be properly regulated. I'm sick of being negged by beauty product ads.
Especially in a paid service, like why do I pay for these services if you're still going to advertise, track, or datamine? I know the answer is greed, why profit off of one option when you can profit off of all of them, but I, the consumer, am fed up with the customer abuse.
Oh I own my computer, and I don't get ads as a result. It's not impossible. A Linux DE does not have ads and your browser can block them with various methods.
Yup. If you use Windows, you need to accept what Microsoft does, because they control the OS. If you use Linux, you only need to accept what the software you install does, and there are a lot of options to select from.
Feel free to complain when Microsoft does something stupid, but don't expect Microsoft to do anything about it. If you want control, use something that preserves that control.
It’s smaller than png which a company that shows images really likes because it’s cheaper so to force adoption they convert a bunch of images to .webp on google images
The problem is that 1. It hadn’t been adapted anywhere so people would have to convert it back to png to use 2. It is worse in every aspect to jxl files so Google has had to block the adaptation of jxl on the web as much as they can (jxl retains more quality and is half the size of webp)
Currently only webkit browsers support jxl out of the box. Firefox has had it in their nightly builds for years now but have never moved it into standard
If Google wants to push webp because it is smaller than previous formats, and jxl is even smaller than that, why would Google have an interst in blocking jxl?
Not saying Google did not or does not block jxl, just your chain of logic as to why they do that does not make sense to me.
It doesn’t make sense which is why people believe Google has ulterior motives. I haven’t seen any real reason not to use jxl as the new format; but I also haven’t looked that far into it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
JXL is new (like 2 years old), webp is older (> 10 years). Adding support for a thing takes time and resources, which is lower priority when there are good-enough formats already supported.
At least that's my perspective as someone who interacts with product owners (i.e. the type of people deciding what features get prioritized).
WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency. Google announced the WebP format in September 2010, and released the first stable version of its supporting library in April 2018.
The format has spotty support across applications and some vulnerabilities were discovered that required patch efforts last year. It's not clear why you should do anything.
I've never actually seen an ad in Windows... Like, literally ever. The worst I've seen is Windows trying to trick me into making edge my default browser.
If I believed all the articles on Lemmy, every part of the OS now has embedded ads, and the OS itself is recording everything I ever do against my will and without my knowledge.
The second part is probably true, but ya, also don't encounter too many ads except for like some default game programs or something installed with the OS that are easy to remove from the Start menu and then you never see them again.
Windows is selling data from what you do and making money and you just aren't noticing the ads are tailored to you.
It's the type of thing that seems harmless, unless you are a woman searching for an abortion provider and Microsoft sells that, and then an ultra-right wing religious majority comes to power and decides to retroactively put to death all women who have had an abortion and use that data to put you to death.
This surveilance mechanism is mostly harmless... until one day it's not.
when was the last time you installed windows? Also, what version? If you've only ever had it set up for you, then you may have only used windows that had already been cleaned of all the bullshit. This includes pc s provided by your work.
For win10, the install iso provided by microsoft puts ads for games in the windows store in the default start menu. I have installed many win10 pc s over the years, and candy crush (among others) is always there.
0 ads too, windows 11 last update. Lemmy circlejerk is pretty much this. These threads are either fake news or ragebait, and the comments are just uninformed/untested opinions.
That without saying that win11 ltsc exists now. At least is something to test.
I see ads pretty much everyday in Windows. They're not as attention grabbing as traditional ads and I think this is part of why some people don't see them.
The Next Great Thing(tm) will not make a number of users that is significant to any real world scenario move away from Windows. The only approach that might have a chance to do that is something that looks and feels as close as possible to Windows. Yes even the parts of Windows that are bad. All of it, except the most glaringly obviously horrible stuff (like ads in menus). And that also includes all the programs a significant number of users care about either running there out of the box without having to jump through any hoops or a replacement fulfilling the same "looks, feels and operates almost identical" criteria.
People care about something feeling familiar and not having to relearn stuff a lot more than about shiny new features.
What's next Microsoft? Replace the windows os loading windows page with a 30s ad? Or have defender uninstall apps if a competitor pays enough? Maybe capture a screenshot of my screen every 3 seconds for AI analysis?
Nah. I've been advocating for Linux for decades. For decades I've been trying to convince people to switch on its own merits, but none of that has been effective.
It took Microsoft sabotaging their product for me to see the needle shift. So I'm done trying to convince people with carrots, it's time for Microsoft to convince the masses with sticks.
At this point I'm more angry at article writers that don't include screenshots of the things they're writing articles about than I am at the issues they're writing about.
A decent amount of the time once the issue is in a bit of context, my reaction is vastly different than what the writer was trying to get me to feel.
I wish there was a way to easily mark or denote articles written by certain authors when loading a page (especially across sites since many of these people write for multiple places) so I don't waste my time reading things from people I've found to have irresponsible or questionable reporting.
I was fully expecting this to be some blown-out-of-proportion nonsense, like a "Sign up" button next to a switch or slider in the settings menu for something that would pertain to Game Pass. Nope, it's a full block of the window dedicated just to an ad, not pertinent to any surrounding settings. Hella egregious.
techradar.com
Active